Forcibly returning refugees, asylum seekers and migrants from Croatia back to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), without assessing their asylum claims or protection needs, has become a regular police practice in violation of international law, according to the Human Rights Watch report, and it was statedthat this practice should stop.
”Croatian authorities, despite official denials and commitments to respect the right to seek asylum and other human rights, participate in the return of persons, including unaccompanied children and families with small children in BiH,” according to the report ”Like We Were Just Animals’: Pushbacks of People Seeking Protection from Croatia to BiH”.
”Border police often steal or destroy phones, money, identification documents, and other privately owned items, often subjecting children and adults to humiliating treatment, sometimes in explicitly racist ways, ” this organization said in a statement.
“Pushbacks have been the standard operating procedure of the Croatian Border Police for a long time, and the Croatian government deceives the institutions of the European Union(EU) through deflection and empty promises,” said Michael Garcia Bochenek, author of the report and senior advisor for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch.
Croatia appeared to return fewer people in the months before joining the Schengen zone, but large-scale returns continued until March, Human Rights Watch found.
In the second half of 2022, the tactic of issuing summary expulsion orders was used, which did not take into account protection needs or offer fair treatment protection, while by the end of March 2023, this practice was abandoned.
During March and April, several hundred people were transferred to BiH based on the “readmission agreement”. This reception is carried out at border crossings, but does not take into account protection needs or provide critical fair treatment protections, which Human Rights Watch considers mass summary expulsions.
“Pushbacks from Croatia violate international prohibitions on torture and other forms of abuse, collective expulsion and return to danger, i.e. forced removal or return (refoulement). Returns of children violate the norms for children’s rights,” it was mentioned in the statement of this organization, and it was added that returns to BiH and collective expulsions should stop, Detektor reports.
